


Danvers

by xXLilium01Xx



Category: Poldark - All Media Types, Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, F/M, slowburn sanvers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-09 21:16:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11113038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXLilium01Xx/pseuds/xXLilium01Xx
Summary: CORNWALL, 1783-87Tired from a grim war in America, Alex Danvers returns home to her family. But the joyful homecoming she had anticipated turns sour, for her father is dead, her estate derelict, and the girl she loves is engaged to her cousin.However, her sympathy for the destitute miners and farmers of this district leads her to rescue a half starved urchin girl from a fairground brawl and take her home - an acts which alters the whole course of her life...(P.S I come from Cornwall so I feel some connection with this book as my grandfather was a miner/farmer)Enjoy the reimagining of 'Poldark' into 'Danvers'.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I have read the original story of 'Poldark' by Winston Graham, and I fully respect his work. This is just a reimagining of the story.  
> Kara has no powers and the story is based in the 1800's. Also Kara is Alex's cousin not sister, soz.

Jerimiah Danvers died March 1783. In Feburuary of that year, feeling that his tenure was becoming short, he sent for his brother from Trenwith. Charles came lolloping over on his great roan horse one cold grey afternoon, and Judy Vasquez, lank-haired and dark-faced and thin, showed him straight into the bedroom where Jerimiah lay possed up with pillows and cushions in the big box bed.  
          Charles looked askance round the room with his small watery blue eyes, at the disorder and the dirt, then lifted his coat-tails and subsided upon a wicker chair which creaked under his weight.  
          "Well, Jerimah."  
          "Well, Charles."  
          "This is bad business."  
          "Bad indeed."  
          "When will you be out again, d'you think?"  
          "There's no telling. I fancy the churchyard will have a strong pull."  
Charles thrust out his bottom lip. He would have discounted the remark if he had not had word to the contrary. He hiccupped a little - riding always gave him the wind these days - and was heartily reassuring.

"Nonsense, man. The gout in the legs never killed nobody. It is when it gets up to the head that it is dangerous,"  
          "Choake tells me different, that there is other cause for the swelling. For once I misdoubt if the old fool is not right. Though in God's truth, by all appearance it is you that should be lying here, since I am but half your size."  
Charles glanced down at the landscape of the black embroidered waistcoat spreading away from under his chin.  
"Mine is healthy flesh. Every man puts on his weight in his middle years. I would not wish to be a yard of pump water like Cousin William-Danvers."  
          Jerimiah lifted an ironical eyebrow but said no more, and then there was silence. The brothers had had little to say to each other for many years, and at this their last meeting small talk was not easy to find. Charles, the elder and more prosperous, who had come in for the family house and lands and most of the mining interests, head of the family and a respected figure in the county, had never quite been able to get away from the suspicion that his younger brother despised him.

Jerimiah had never been content to do the things expected of him; enter the Church or the Army or marry properly and leave Charles to run the district himself.  
Not that Charles minded a few lapses, but there were limits and Jerimiah had overstepped them. The fact that he had been behaving himself for the last few years did not score out olds grievances.  
          As for Jerimiah, a man with a cynical mind and few illusions, he had no complaint against life or against his brother. He had lived one to the limit and ignored the other. There was some truth in his reply to Charles's next comment of, "Why man, you're young enough yet. Two years junior to me, and I'm as fit and well. Aarf!"

Jerimiah said; "Two years in age, maybe, but you've only lived half as fast."  
Charles sucked the ebony tip of his cane and looked sidelong about the room from under heavy lids. "This damned was not settled yet. Prices soaring. Wheat seven and eight shillings a bushel. Butter ninepence a pound. Wish the copper price was the same. We're thinking of cutting a new level at Grambler. Eighty fathom. Maybe it will defray the initial outlay, though I doubt it. Been doing much with your fields this year?"  
          "It was about the war that I wanted to see you," said Jerimiah, struggling a little farther up the pillows and gasping for breath.  
"It must be only a matter of months now before the provisional peace is confirmed. Then Alex will be home and maybe I shall not be here to greet her. You're me brother, though we've never hit off so well. I want to tell you how things are and to leave you to look after things till she gets back."

Charles took the cane from his mouth and smiled defensively. He looked as if he had been asked for a loan.  
          "I've not much time, y'know."  
          "It won't take much of your time. I've little or nothing to leave. There's a copy of my will on the table beside you. Read it at your leisure. J'onn has the original."  
Charles groped with his clumsy swollen hand and picked up a piece of parchment from his rickety three- legged table behind him.  
"The estate will go to Kara. Sell it there are any purchasers; it will fetch little. That's down in the will. Kara will have my share in Grambler too, since she is the only one of your family who has been over since Alex left."

Jerimiah wiped his nose on the soiled sheet, "But Alex will come back. I've heard from her since the fighting ceased."  
          "There's many hazards yet."  
          "I've a feeling," said Jerimiah, "A conviction. Care to take a wager? Settle when we meet. There'll be some sort of currency in the next world."  
Charles stared again at the sallow lined face which had been once so handsome. He had a little relieved that Jerimiah's request was no more than this, but slow to relax his caution. And irreverence on a deathbed struck him as reckless and uncalled for.

"Cousin William-Danvers was visiting us the other day. He enquired for you."  
          Jerimiah pulled a face.  
"I told him how ill you was," Charles went on. "He suggested that though you might not wish to call in the Revd Mr Odgers, maybe you would like a spiritual consolation from one of your own family."  
          "Meaning her."  
"Well, she's the only one in orders now Betty's husband's gone."

          "I want none of them," said Jerimiah, "Though no doubt it was kindly meant. But if he thought it would do me good to confess my sins, did he think I should rather tell secrets to one of my own blood? No, I'd rather talk to Odgers, half-starved little hornywink though he is. But I want none of them."  
"If you change your mind," said Charles, "send Judy over with a message. Aarf!"  
          Jerimiah grunted, "I shall know soon enough. But even if there was something in it with all their pomp and praying, should I ask 'em in at this hour? I've lived my life, and by God I have enjoyed it! There's no merit to go snivelling now. I'm not sorry for myself and I don't want anyone else to be. What's coming I'll take. That's all."

There was silence in the room. Outside the wind thrust and stirred about the slate and stone.  
          "Time I was off," said Charles. "These Paynters  are letting your place get into a rare mess. Why don't you get someone reliable?"  
"I'm too old to swap donkeys. Leave that to Alex. She'll soon put things to right." Charles belched disbelievingly. He had no high opinion of Alex's abilities.   
          "She's in New York now," said Jerimiah, "Part of the garrison. She's quite recovered from her wound. It was lucky she escaped the Yorktown siege. A captain now, you know. Still in 62nd foot. I've mislaid her letter, else I'd show it to you."

          "Francis is a great help to me these days," said Charles. "So would Alex have been to you if she was home instead of coosing around after Frenchmen and Colonials."  
"There was one other thing," said Jerimiah, "D'you see or hear anything of Lucy Lane these days?"  
After a heavy meal of questions took time to transmit themselves to Charles's brain, and where is brother was concerned they needed an examination for hidden motives. "Who is that?" He said clumsily.  
          "General Lane's daughter. You know her. A thin, fair child."  
"Well, what of it?" said Charles.

"I was asking if you'd seen her. Alex always mentions her. A pretty little thing. She's counting on her being here when she comes back, and I think it a suitable arrangement. An early marriage will steady her down, and she couldn't find a decent partner, though I day I shouldn't, being her sire. Two good old families. If I'd been on my feet I should have gone over to see Jonathan at Christmas to fix it up. We did talk of it before, but he said wait till Alex came back.  
          "Time I was going," said Charles, creaking to his feet. "I hope the girl will settle down when she returns, whether she marries or no. she was keeping bad company that she should never have got into."

"D'you see the Lanes now?" Jerimiah refused to be side-tracked by references to his own shortcomings. "I'm cut off from the world here and Prudie has no ear for anything but scandal in Sawle."  
          "Oh, we catch sight of 'em from time to time. Kara and Francis saw them at a party in Truro this summer-"  
Charles peered through the window. "Rot me if it isn't Choake. Well, now you'll have more company, and I thought you said no one ever came to see you. I must be on my way."  
"He's only quizzing to see how much faster his pills are finishing me off. That or his politics. As if I care whether Fox is in his earth or hunting Tory chickens."

"Have it as you please," For one of his bulk Charles moved quickly, picking up hat and gauntlet gloves and making to be gone. At the last he stood awkwardly by the bed, wondering how best to take his leave, while the clip-clop of a horse's hoofs went passed the window.  
"Tell him I don't want to see him," said Jerimiah irritably. "Tell him to give his potions to his silly wife."  
          "Calm yourself." said Charles, "Aunt Agatha sent her love, mustn'ts forget  that; and she said you was to take hot beer and sugar and eggs. She says that it will cure you."  
Jerimiah's irritation lifted, "Aunt Agatha's a wise old turnip. Tell her I'll do as she says. And - and tell her I'll save her a place beside me."  
He began to cough.

"God b' w' ye,' said Charles hurriedly, and sidled out of the room.  
Jerimiah was left alone.  
          He had spent alone since Alex went, but they had not seemed to matter as he took to his bed a month ago. Now they were beginning to depress him and his mind filled of fancies. An out-of-doors man to whom impulse all his days had meant action, this painful, gloomy, bedridden life was no life at all. He had nothing to do with his time except think over the past, and the past was not always the most elegant subject matter.  
He kept thinking of Eliza, his long-dead wife. She had been his mascot. While she lived all had gone well. The mine he opened and called after her brought rich results; this house, begun in pride and hope, had been built; two strong sons. His own indiscreations behind him, he had settled down, promising to rival Charles, in more ways than one; he had built this house with the idea that his own branch of the family Danvers should become rooted no less securely than the main Trenwith tree.

With Eliza had gone all his luck. The house was half built, the mine had petered out, and with Eliza's death, his incentive to expand money and labour on either. The building had been finished off anyhow, though much remained unrealised. Then Wheal Vanity had closed down also and little Claude Anthony had died.   
          ...He could hear Dr Choake and his brother talking at the front door; his brother's dusty thickened tenor. Choake's voice, deep and slow and pompous. Anger and impotence welled up in Jerimiah. What the devil did they mean droning away on his doorstep, no doubt discussing him and nodding their heads together and saying, well after all, what else could one expect. He tugged the bell beside his bed and waited, fuming, for the flip flop of Prudie's slippers.

She came at last, ungainly and indistince in the door-way. Jerimiah peered at her short-sightedly in the fading light.   
          "Bring candles, woman. D'you want me to die in the dark? And tell those two old men to be gone."  
Prudie hunched herself like a bird of ill omen, "Dr Choake and Mister Charles, your meaning, an?"  
          "Who else?"  
          She went out, and Jerimiah was fumed again, while there was the sound of muttered conversation not far away from his door. He looked around for his stick, determined to make one more effort to get up and walk out to them. But then the voices were raised again in farewells, and a horse could be heard moving away across the cobbles and towards the stream.  
That was Charles. Now for Choake...

There was a loud rap of a riding crop on his door and the surgeon came in. Thomas Choake was a Bodmin man who had practiced in London, had married a brewer's daughter and returned to his native county to buy a small estate near Sawle. He was a tall clumsy man with a booming voice, thatch-grey eyebrows and an impatient mouth. Among the smaller gentry his London experience stood him in good stead; they felt he was abreast of up-to-date physical ideas.  
          He was a surgeon to several of the mines in the district, and with the knife had the same neck-or-nothing approach that he had on the hunting field.  
Jerimiah thought him a humbug and had several times considered calling in Dr Pryce from Redruth. Only the fact that he had no more faith in Dr Pryce prevented him.

"Well, well," said Dr Choake, "So we've been having visitors, eh? We'll feel better, no doubt, for our brother's visit."  
          "I've got some business off my hands," said Jerimiah, "That was the purpose of inviting him."  
Dr Choake felt for the invalid's pulse with heavy fingers. "Cough," he said.  
Jerimiah grudgingly obeyed. "Our condition is much of the same," said the surgeon. "The distemper has not increased. Have we been taking the pills?"  
          "Charles is twice my size. Why don't you doctor him?" 

"You are ill, Mr Danvers. Your brother is not. I do not prescribe unless I am called upon to do so," Choake lifted back the bedclothes and began to prod his patients swollen leg.  
          "Great mountain of a fellow," grumbled Jerimiah, " _He'll_ never see his feet again."  
"Oh, come; your brother is not out of the common. I well remember when I was in London-"  
"Uff!"  
"Did that hurt?"  
"No" said Jerimiah.  
Choake prodded again to make sure, "There is a distinct abatement in the condition of our left leg. There is still too much water to hold both. If we could get the heart to pump it away, I well remember when I was in London being called in to the victim of a tavern brawl in Westminster. He had quarrelled with an Italian Jew, who drew a dagger and thrust it up to the hilt into my patient's belly. But thick was the protective fat that I found the knife point had not even pierced the bowel. A sizeable fellow. Let me see, did I bleed you when I was last here?"  
          "You did."  
          "I think we might leave it this time. Our heart is inclined to be excitable. Control the choler, Mr Danvers. An even temper helps the body secrete the proper juices.  
"Tell me," said Jerimiah, "Do you see anything of the Lanes? The Lanes of Cusgarne, y'know. I asked my brother, but he returned an evasive answer."

          "The Lanes? I see them from time to time. I think they are in health. I am not, of course, their physician and we do not call on each other socially."  
No, thought Jerimiah, Mrs Lane will have a care for that, "I smell something shifty in Charles." he said shrewdly.  
"Do you see Lucy?"  
"The daughter? She is about."  
"There was an understanding as to her between myself and her father."  
"Indeed. I had not heard of it."

Jerimiah pushed himself up the pillows. His conscience had begun to prick him. It was late in the day for the growth of his long-dormant faculty, but he was fond of Alex, and in the long hours of his illness he had begun to wonder whether he should not have done more to keep his daughter's interests warm.  
          "I think maybe I'll send Vasquez over tomorrow," he muttered. "I'll ask Johnathon to come and see me."  
"I doubt if Mr Lane will be free; it's the Quarter Sessions this week. Ah, that's a welcome sight!..."  
Prudie Paynter came lumbering in with two candles.

The yellow light showed up her sweaty red face and its draping of black hair. "Ad your physic, 'ave you?" she asked in a throaty whisper.  
Jerimiah turned irritably on the doctor. "I've told you before, Choake; pills I'll swallow, God help me, but draughts and potions I'll not face."  
         "I well remember," Choake said ponderously, 2when I was practising in Bodmin as a young man, one of my patients, an elderly gentleman who suffered much from strangury and stone-"  
"Don't stand there, Prudie," snapped Jerimiah to the servant, "Get out."  
Prudie stopped scratching and reluctantly left he room.

"So you think I'm on the mend, eh?" Jerimiah said before the physician could go on.  
          "How long before I'm up and about?"  
"Hm, hm. A slight abatement, I said. Great care yet awhile. We'll have you on your feet before Alex returns. Take my prescriptions regular and you will find they will set you up-"

"How's your wife?" Jerimiah asked maliciously.  
Again interrupted, Choake frowned. "Well enough, thank you." The fact that the fluffy lisping Polly, though only half his age, had added no family to the dowry she brought, was standing grievance against her. So long as she is unfruitful he had no influence to dissuade women from buying motherwort and other less respectable brews from travelling gypsies.

The doctor had gone and Jerimiah was once more alone- alone this time until morning. He might, by pulling persistently on the bell cord, call a reluctant Vasquez or Prudie until such time as they went to bed, but after that there was no one, and before that they were showing signs of deafness as his illness became more clear. He knew they spent most of each evening drinking, and once they reached a certain stage, nothing at all would move them.  
          But he hadn't the energy to round on them as in the old days. It would have been different if Alex had been here.  
For once Charles was right but only partly right. It was he, Jerimiah, who had encouraged Alex to go away.

He had no belief in keeping his daughter at home as additional lackeys. Let them find their own stirrups. Besides, it would have been undignified to have his daughter brought up in court for being party to an assault upon excise men, with its associated charges of brandy running and the rest. Not that Cornish Magistrates would have convicted, but the question of gaming debts might have been raised.  
          No, it was Eliza who should have been here, Eliza who had been snatched from him thirteen years back. Well, now he was alone and soon be joining his wife. It did not occur to him to feel surprise that the other women in his life scarcely touched his thoughts. They had been creatures of a pleasant exciting game, the more mettlesome the better, but no sooner broken in than forgotten.

The candles were guttering in the draught from under the door. The wind was rising. Vasquez had said there was a ground swell this morning; after a quiet cold spell they were returning to rain and storm.  
He felt he would like one more look at the sea, which even now was licking at the rocks behind the house. He had no sentimental notions  about the sea; he had no regard for its dangers or its beauties; to him it was a close acquaintance whose every virtue and failing, every smile and tantrum he had come to understand.  
The land too. Was the Long Field ploughed? Whether Alex married or not there would be little enough to live on without land.

          With a decent wife to manage things... Lucy was an only child; rare virtue worth bearing in mind. The Lanes were s bit poverty-stricken, but there would be something. Must go and see Jonathan and fix things up. "Look here Jonathan," he would say. "Alex won't have much money, but there's land, and that always counts in the long run-"  
Jerimiah dozed. He thought he was out walking round the edge of the Long Field with the sea on his right and a strong wind pressing against his shoulder. A bright sun warmed his back and the air tasted like wine from a cold cellar.  
          The tide was out on Hendrawna Beach, and the sun drew streaky reflections in the wet sand. The Long Field had not only been ploughed but already sown and sprouting.

He skirted the field until he reached the furthest tip of the Damsel Point where the low cliff climbed in ledges and boulders down to the sea. The water surged and eddied, changing colour to the shelved of dripping rocks.  
          With some special purpose in mind he climbed down the rocks until the cold sea suddenly surged about his knees, sending pain through his legs unpleasantly like the pain he had felt from the swelling these last few months. But it did not stop him, and he let himself slip into the water until it was up to his neck. Then he struck out from the shore. He was full of joy at being in the sea again after a lapse of two years.

He breathed out his pleasure in long cool gasps, allowed the water to lap close against his eyes. Lethargy crept up his limbs. With the sound of the waves in his ears and heart he allowed himself to drift and sink into cool feathery darkness.  
          Jerimiah slept. Outside, the last trailing patterns of day light moved quietly out of the sky and left the house and the trees and the stream and the cliffs in darkness. The wind freshened, blowing steadily and strongly from the west, searching among the ruined mine sheds on the hill, rustling the tops of the sheltered apple trees, lifting a corner of loose thatch on one of the barns, blowing a spatter of cold rain in through a broken shutter of the library where two rats nosed with cautious jerky scraping movements among the lumber and the dust.

The stream hissed and bubbled in the darkness, and above it a long untended gate swung _whee-tap_ on its hanging. In the kitchen, Judy Vasquez unstoppered a second jar of gin and Prudie threw a fresh log on the fire.  
          "Wind's rising, blast it," said Vasquez. "Always there's wind. Always when you  don't want it there's wind."  
"We'll need more wood 'fore morning,' said Prudie.  
"Use this stool," said Vasquez. "The wood's 'ard, twill smoulder."  
"Give me a drink, you black worm," said Prudie.  
"Wait on yourself," said Vasquez.

...Jerimiah slept.

 

 

 


	2. Coming Home

It was windy. The pale afternoon sky was shredded with clouds, the road, grown dustier and more uneven in the last hour, was scattered with blown and rustling leaves.   
There was five people in the coach; a thin clerkly man with a pinched face and a shiny suit, and his wife, fat as her husband was thin, and holding to her breast a confused bundle of pink and white draperies from one of which pouted the creased and overheated features of a young baby.  
The other travellers were a man and a woman, both young, one clergyman of about thirty-five, the other some years her junior. 

Almost since the coach left St Austell there had been silence inside it. The child slept soundly despite the jolting of the vehicle and the rattle of the windows and the clank of swingle bars; nor had the stops wakened it. From time to time the elderly couple exchanged remarks in understones, but the thin husband was unwilling to talk, a little overawed by the superior class in which he found himself.   
The younger of the two youngsters had been reading a book throughout the journey, the elder had watched the passing countryside, one hand holding back the faded dusty brown velvet curtain.  
This was a small woman, severe in clerical black, wearing her own hair scraped back and curled above and behind the ears. The cloth she wore was a fine quality and her stockings were of silk. Her was a long, keen, humourless, thin-lipped face, vital and hard. The little clerk knew the face but could not name it.   
The clergyman was in much the same position over the other occupant of the coach. A half-dozen times his glance had rested on the thick unpowered hair opposite, and on the face of his fellow traveller. 

When they were not more than fifteen minutes out of Truro and the horses had slowed to a walking pace up the stiff hill, the younger woman looked up from her book and their eyes meet. "You'll pardon me, sir," said the clergyman in a sharp vigorous voice. "Your features are familiar, but I find it hard to recall where we last met. Was it at Oxford?"  
The young womn was tall and thin and big-boned, with a scar on her cheek. She wore a double-breasted riding coat cut away short in front to show the waistcoat and the stout breeches, both of a lighter brown. Her hair, which had a hint of copper and red in its darkness, was brushed back and ties at the back with the brown ribbon.

"You're the Revd Dr Halse, aren't you?" she said. The little clerk, who had been following this exchange, made an expressive face at his wife. Rector of Towerdreth, Curate of St Erme, Headmaster of Truro Grammar School, high burgess of the town and late mayor, Dr Halse was a personage. It explained his bearing.  
"You know me, then," Dr Halse with a gracious air.   
"I usually have a memory for faces."  
"You have had so many pupils."  
"Ah, that explains it. Maturity changes a face. And hm. Let me see ... is it Hawke?"  
"Danvers."  
The clergyman's eyes narrowed in an effort of remembering brance. "Kara, is it? I thought-"  
"Alex. You will remember my cousin more clearly. She stayed on. I felt, quite wrongly, that at thirteen my education had gone far enough."  
Recognition came. "Alexandra Danvers. Well, well. You've changes. I remember now," said Dr Halse with a glint of cold humour. "You were insubordinate. I had to thrash you at frequent intervals, and then you ran away."

"Yes." Danvers turned the page of her book. "A bad business. And your ankles as sore as my buttocks." Small pink spots came to the clergyman's cheeks.   
He stared a moment at Alex and then turned to look out of the window.  
The little clerk had heard of the Danvers, had heard of Jerimiah, from whom, they said, in the fifties and sixties no pretty woman married or unmarried was safe. This must be his daughter. An unusual face with its strongly set cheekbones, petit mouth and large strong white teeth.   
The eyes were a very clear brown-grey under the heavy eyelids which gave a number of the Danvers that deceptively sleepy look.

Dr Halse was returning to the attack.  
"Francis, I suppose, is well? Is he married?"  
"Not when I last heard, sir. I've been in America some time."  
"Dear me. A deplorable mistake, the fighting. I was against it throughout. Did you see much of the war?"  
"I was in it." They had reached the top of the hill at last and the driver was slacking his bearing reins at the descent before him.   
Dr Halse wrinkled his sharp nose. "You are a Tory?"

"A soldier."  
"Well, it was not the fault of the soldiers that we lost, England's heart was not in it. We have a derelict old man on the throne. He'll not last much longer. The Prince has different views."  
The road in the steepest part of the hill was deeply rutted, and the coach jolted and swayed dangerously. The baby began to cry. They reaches the bottom and the man beside the driver blew a blast of his horn. They turned into St Austell Street, it was a Tuesday afternoon and there were few people about the shops. Two half-naked urchins ran the length of the street begging for a copper, but gave up the chase as the coach swayed into the mud of St Clement's Street. With much creaking and shouting they rounded the sharp corner, crossed the river by the narrow bridge, jolted over granite cobbles, turned and twisted again and a last drew up before the Red Lion Inn. 

In the bustle that followed, the Revd Dr Halse got out first with a stiff word of farewell and was gone, stepping briskly between the puddles of rainwater and horse urine to the other side of the narrow street. Danvers rose to the follow, and the clerk saw for the first time that she was lame.   
"Can I help you, sir?" she offered, putting down her belongings.  
The young man refused but with thanks and, handed out from the outside by a postboy, climbed down.

When Alex left the coach rain was beginning to fall, a thin fine rain blowing before the wind, which was gusty and uncertain here in the hollow of the hills. She gazes about her and sniffed. All this was so familiar, quite as truly a coming home as when she would reach her own house. This narrow cobbled street with streamlet water bubbling down it, the close-built squat houses with their bow windows and lace curtains, many of them partly screening faces which were watching the arrival of the coach, even the cries of the postboys seemed to have taken on a different and more familiar note.   
Truro in the old days had been the centre of 'life' for her and her family. A port and coinage town, the shopping centre and a meeting place of fashion, the town had grown rapidly in the last few years, new and stately houses having sprung up among the disorderly huddle of old ones to mark its adoption as a winter and town residency by some of the oldest and most powerful families in Cornwall. The new aristocracy too were leaving their mark: the Halls, the Treworthys, the Warleggans, families which had pushed their way up from humble beginnings on the crest of the new industries.

A strange town. She felt it more on her return. A secretive, important little town, clustering in the fold of the hills astride and about its many streams, almost surrounded by running water and linked to the rest of the worlds by fords, by bridges, and by stepping-stones. Miasma and other fevers were always rifle.  
...No sign of Judy.  
She limped into the inn. "My woman was meant to meet me," Vasquez is her name. Judy Vasquez of Nampara."  
The landlord peered at her short-sightedly. "Oh, Judy Vasquez. Yes we all know her well, Ma'am. But we have not seen her today. You say she was to meet you here? Boy, go and ascertain if Vasquez - you know her? - If Vasquez is in the stables or has been here today."

Alex ordered a glass of brandy and by the time it came the boy was back to say that Ms Vasquez had not been seen that day.  
"The arrangement was quite definite. It doesn't matter. You have a saddle horse I can hire?" The landlord rubbed the end of his long nose. "Well, we have a mare that was left here three days gone. In fact, we held it in lieu of a debt. I don't think there could be any objection to loaning her if you could give me some reference."  
"My name is Alex Danvers. I am the niece to Mr Charles Danvers of Trenwith."

"Dear, dear, yes; I should have recognised you, Miss Danvers. I'll have the mare saddled for you at once."   
"No, wait. There's some daylight yet. Have her ready in an hour."  
Out in the street again, Alex turned down the narrow slit of Church Lane. At the end she bore right and, after passing the school where her education had come to an ungracious end, she stopped before a door on which was printed: 'Nat. G. Pearce. Notary and Commissioner of Oaths.' She pulled at the bell for some time before a pimply woman admitted her.

"Mr Pearce bean't well today," she said. "I'll see if he'll see you." She climbed the wooden stairs, and after an interval called down an invitation over the worm-eaten banisters.  
Alex groped a way up and was shown into a parlour.   
Mr Nathanial Pearce was sitting in an easy chair in front of a large fire with one leg tied in bandages propped upon another chair. He was a big man with a bog face, coloured a light plum purple from overeating.   
"Oh, now this is a surprise, I do exclaim, Miss Danvers. How pleasant. You'll forgive me if I don't rise; the old trouble; each attack seems worse than the last. Take a seat."  
Alex grasped a moist hand and chose a chair as far from the fire as was polite. Insufferably hot in here and the air was old and stale. 

"You'll remember," she said, "I wrote to you I was returning this week."  
"Oh yes, Mis - er - Captain Danvers; it had slipped my memory for the moment; how nice to call in on your way home." Mr Pearce adjusted his bob-wig which, in the way of his profession, had a high frontlet and a long bag at the back tied in the middle.  
"I am desolate here, Captain Danvers; my daughter offers me no company; she has become converted to some Methodist way of belief, and is out almost every night at a prayer meeting. She talks so much of God that it quite embarrasses me. You must have a glass of canary."

"My stay is to be short," said Alex. It certainly must, she thought, or I shall sweal away. "I am anxious to be home again, but thought I'd see you on my way. Your letter did not reach me until a fortnight before we sailed from New York."  
"Dear, dear, such delay; what blow it would be; and you have been wounded; is it severe?"  
Alex eased her leg. "I see from your letter that my father died in March. Who has been administrated the estate since then, my uncle or you?"  
Mr Pearce absently scratched the ruffles on his chest. "I know you would wish m to be frank with you."  
"Of course."  
"Well, when we came to go into his affairs, Mis - er - Captain Danvers, it did not seem that he had left much for either of us to administer."

A slow smile crept over Alex's mouth; it made her look younger, less intractable.  
"Everything was naturally left to you. I'll give you a copy of the will before you go; should you predecease him, then his niece Kara. Aside from the actual property there is little to come in for. Ouch, this thing is twinging most damnably!"  
"I have never looked on my father as a wealthy man. I asked, though, and was anxious to know, for a special reason. He was buried at Sawle?"  
The lawyer stopped scratching and eyed the woman shrewdly. "You're thinking of settling at Nampara now, Captain Danvers?"  
"I am."  
"Any time I can do any business for you, only too pleased. I should say that you may find your property a little neglected."

Alex turned.  
"I have not ridden over myself," said Mr Pearce; "This leg, you know; most distressing, and me not yet two and fifty; but clerk has been out. Your father was in failing health for some time and things are not kept just so neat and tidy as you'd like when the master's not about, are they? Nor's your uncle so young as he used to be. Is Vasquez meeting you with a horse.?"  
"She was to have done so but did not turn up."  
"The, my dear ma'am, why not stay the night with us? My daughter will be home from her praying in time to cook me a bite of supper. We have pork; I know we have pork; and an excellent bed; yes, it would suit me well."  
Alex took out a handkerchief and mopped her face. 

"It's very kind of you. I feel that, being so near my home today, I should prefer to reach it."  
Mr Pearce sighed and struggled into a more upright position. "Then give me a hand, will you? I'll get you a copy of the will, so's you may take it home and read it at your leisure."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry guys. I know I promise an update more than a week ago but I have just been so busy. :P   
> Anyway I have finished my exams so now I am able to post at my own leisure for the next 12 weeks. The story is written I just have to re-write it up on the computer.   
> The next chapter will be up before next Thursday. :) and this time I promise.


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